


A Very Exclusive club

by thought



Category: Hamilton - Miranda
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, F/M, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-28
Updated: 2015-10-28
Packaged: 2018-04-28 15:31:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,825
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5095868
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thought/pseuds/thought
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>John Laurens joins a commune in March.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Very Exclusive club

**Author's Note:**

  * For [toomanyhometowns](https://archiveofourown.org/users/toomanyhometowns/gifts).



John Laurens joins a commune in March.

There's a snowman in the front yard when his cab drops him and all of his worldly possessions (not counting the detritus of his childhood clogging up the mausoleum that is his mom's spare bedroom) out on the street in front of the old brick mansion. And it's an actual mansion, built low and big and solid like it's hunkered down against the winter winds. The snowman is wearing a pink scarf and holding a bedraggled little sign informing him in big block letters that 'capitalism kills'. There's a carrot sticking straight up out of the top of it's head. John has already spent sixteen hours in serious examination and contemplation of his life and his choices, and even if an extra five minutes of snowman-induced consideration might give him a new perspective the cab has already pulled away and his budget for the rest of the week is eighty-five cents he'd found in the bottom of his backpack.

The welcoming party consists of Alex, a cold mug of coffee, and Alex's dick. Well, ok, it hasn't arrived to the party full steam ahead, but it's definitely lurking hopefully just off stage.

"I'm going to regret asking this--" John says.

"Hercules is making me pants," Alex says immediately. "I made you coffee. I also expected you two hours ago, which is in fact exactly the time you told me in your text, I have it here as proof, so now you're going to drink this coffee as recompense for making me think you'd been eaten by Republican cannibals in Missouri."

"I didn't even go through Missouri."

"Their reach is long," he says, apparently entirely serious. "Thomas smiled at me this morning. You really should've texted to let me know you weren't dead."

"Hamilton," someone says from inside the house. "Close the door before the heating bill goes up any further. And put some pants on, for Christ's sake."

"Let me in,first," John adds quickly. Alex looks offended at the implication he might forget this basic step, but John was there the first and only day that Alex took high school shop class.

Inside it's not actually that much warmer. The mysterious voice turns out to belong to a kid around Alex's age standing at the foot of the grand fucking staircase in dress pants, a crisp white button-down, and a black snuggy, like that somehow makes it professional. John dislikes him on sight.

"John," says Alex. "This is Aaron. Burr. I'm sorry, it's like only saying the first half of a word, I can't not."

"A pleasure," Burr says, holding out a hand. "Hamilton's told us a lot about you."

"Hmm," says John. Burr's skin is soft and dry and cool, his handshake peremptory and firm. "He hasn't mentioned you at all."

This is a lie, but he figures it's actually more courteous to pretend complete ignorance than bring up the three day crisis at the beginning of September which he'd spent fielding Alex's increasingly frantic and convoluted attempts to figure out why Burr didn't want to make friendship bracelets and skip off into the courtroom together in a gentle shower of rose petals and orphan tears.

Burr's distant little smile doesn't even flicker. "Understandable," Burr says. "Long-distance relationships do tend to suffer when one party is under significant academic pressure. Communication becomes... Difficult."

"Oh," says John. "No. We're not--"

"John's straight," Alex says. "Also, stop projecting. She stopped answering your calls in December and you stopped trying to call her three days after that."

"As I remember you were more invested in that relationship working out than I was. Which one of us is projecting? Also, house contract, section iv, heading 4--"

"Point D, yes, thank you, I know." Alex turns to John. "I'm very sorry I disclosed your sexuality without your consent."

"Haha," says john. "Uh. You didn't." Someone should probably look into the way the floor tips side-to-side with no warning. is chest hurts."

"Pants," says Burr, coming to his rescue. "No one wants to see that."

"Objection," a girl calls from the top of the stairs. Unlike Burr her suit succeeds at projecting terrifying professionalism. He's pretty sure the creases in her pinstriped pants could slit a throat, if the pointy tips of her heels didn't do the job first. She sweeps down the stairs like she's going to war, and John can feel his eyes getting wider and wider the closer she gets. Burr shifts out of the way without even looking, drumming his fingers on his watch (of course he's the kind of asshole who still wears an actual watch) in boredom.

"And where are you off to, Angelica?" Burr asks, leaning against the railing.

Alex makes a faint gurgling noise beside him. Without looking John reaches over to pat his shoulder supportively.

"I've got a lunch meeting."

"With the dean?"

"With my father."

Burr winces. "Here's hoping it's productive."

She holds up a briefcase, brass buckles gleaming against buttery leather. "I'm coming prepared. I'll be back in time for hard liquor hour."

John waits until she's gone to let his eyebrows spring upwards. "What happened to cocktail hour?"

"Law school happened," Alex says, gazing emptily into the distance just past Burr's shoulder. "Does anyone know if the sex shop down town is open on Sundays? It's still early, I could probably get there if I took my bike."

"Jesus Christ," Burr says, and starts up the staircase. John shifts a little uncomfortably.

"I'm going to pretend that was a complete and inexplicable non-sequitur. Also, I'm sorry, I think I misunderstood earlier because I am almost a hundred percent sure even you could not summon forth a god from Greek mythology to be your personal tailor."

"Technically not a god," Alex says absently, but he's obviously still distracted. He takes John up to the third floor where the trapdoor that leads to John's new room is tucked shamefully away at the far end of the hallway.

"This is... cozy," John says, shoving his suitcase ahead of him into the attic, instead of the fifty bighting comments caught on the back of his tongue on topics ranging from 'shameful high school bff isn't cool enough for university friends' to a pointed commentary on race politics in domestic spaces.

"It's the biggest bedroom in the house," Alex says, ducking his head and rubbing under his nose, and John thinks maybe he's not actually as clueless as he seems.

"Thanks," says John, awkward and unsure how to acknowledge Alex's contrition.

Alex ducks his head, bounces from foot to foot. The almost five years of physical separation between them hovers thick and heavy in the hallway.

"I'm gonna," says Alex finally, waving a hand toward the stairs. John lets out a breath.

"Yeah. I'll see you at dinner, right?"

"Yeah," Alex says, nodding up and down rapidly as he backs away. John doesn't wait to watch him go, just scrambles up the ladder and pulls the trap door closed behind him.

He spends the afternoon unpacking, leaflets and photos from various rallies and protests over the years that he's printed out as souvenirs, an oversized hoody with the name of his-- no, no longer his-- university emblazoned across the back. Six months, he'd made it through law school, six months of working his ass off and trying to ignore the feeling in his gut like a brick slowly settling. He hasn't spoken to his father since the phonecall where he told him he was dropping out. Conversations with his mother have remained superficially distant, false cheer and affection layered over the steadily falling numbers in his bank account and the stacks of financial aid paperwork sitting on top of his med school applications. Alex is quite possibly the closest thing to family he's got left but even the mental image of Alex peddling his bike through the snow to get to the sex shop only reminds him that he's trying to fit himself into a puzzle that's already been finished.

*

On the first day of spring there's a blizzard. John gets home late from his volunteer shift at the shelter down town, clothes still smelling overwhelmingly of coffee thanks to his very secret job at Starbucks. Alex and Burr are in the kitchen organising the chore schedule, which apparently consists of chasing each other around the counter with whiteboard markers. Everyone else is in the living room, and with one more wary glance into the kitchen John decides he does not actually need to eat his leftover veggie pizza right this moment and joins them.

It's not until he's flopped down beside Lafayette on the old sofa that he realizes Thomas and Angelica are debating philosophy, and by then he can't run away without being really goddamn obvious about it.

"It's been almost an hour," Lafayette says under his breath.

"Is there a record?"

Lafayette snorts. "Three days, with breaks to sleep. Not together, incidentally."

John shutters before he can stop himself. "I do credit her with some taste, I never assumed."

Lafayette nods approvingly. "A lot of people do."

Alex and Burr come stampeding into the living room, both looking furious. John's been living here long enough to start seeing their twin fits of indignance as cute, which is probably going to permanently warp his crisis intervention skills.

"Lafayette!" Alex says, skidding to a stop right in front of him. "Lafayette, light of my life, wind beneath my wings, please tell Aaron Burr that you did indeed volunteer to design the vegetable garden this year? It was back in September, I remember the meeting."

Lafayette makes a show of setting aside his tablet and straightening up. "Oh, sorry, are you speaking to me now? It's so hard to tell these days. And by days I mean weeks."

Alex's eyes widen, and he pulls his phone out of his pocket. "I-- Oh, wow. Ok, I swear I haven't been ignoring you, I was going to reply to your texts. all of them. And besides, if there was anything really important you needed to talk to me about, you know where my bedroom is."

Across the room Angelica groans and presses her face into her hands. "Is this what second-hand embarrassment feels like?"

"Yes," Burr says immediately. "Now just imagine getting this feeling everytime Hamilton opens his mouth. This is my burden."

Lafayette smirks a bit. "It makes a man wonder if he's even welcome in your bedroom when so many texts go unanswered."

"You're always welcome," Alex says. Possibly he flutters his eyelashes. John wouldn't know as he's too busy trying to become one with the sofa. "I know I'm the worst at answering your texts and I'm honestly sorry. Is there any way I can make it up to you?"

"From between her fingers Angelica says "He really likes that new flogger I ordered online for Christmas."

Lafayette looks thoughtful. Eliza, who until now had managed to stay engrossed in her laptop, bangs her head back against her chair. "Honestly, could you not, Angie? I'm sitting right here."

"Sorry, Betsy," Angelica chirps. "I'd say you need to keep your boyfriend on a shorter leash, but I guess that's kind of the whole problem, isn't it?"

"Ha," Thomas says. "Betsy. I never thought of that one. It's cute. Suits you. Is that reserved for family or can anybody play?"

Eliza smiles sweetly at him. "how about you try it and find out?" John has quite possibly never been as terrified as he is in that moment.

"To answer your question, I did agree to do the garden," Lafayette says. Alex high fives the air.

"You see, Aaron Burr?!"

"I certainly see something," Burr mutters. "Is there anyone who has a desperate and all-encompassing desire to plant seeds? Keep in mind this is going to be right around finals, so please take both your writing and grading schedules into account."

"That's a not-so-subtle hint that Hercules and I should find ourselves struck by green thumb syndrome," Eliza says.

Burr shrugs. "John, too."

"Well if you've got John then I don't see why I need to offer," Eliza says. "It's a two person job, and my workload is only getting heavier, and seeing as I'm the one with the real job-- that came out wrong, I'm sorry, Hercules, no offence meant. Tailoring is just as important a job as social work."

"Quite a bit taken," Hercules says mildly, not looking up from his phone.

"So I'll put all three of you on the roster, then," Burr says. "I'm sure John can find time in amongst his busy schedule working for corporate giants serving five dollar cups of coffee."

"Shhh," angelica says. "It's a secret."

"Med school is expensive," John says, remarkably calmly given the situation. "We can't all be smart enough to get a scholarship or rich enough not to need one."

Alex raises a hand, pointing across the room at Thomas. "This is what I was talking about on St. Patrick's Day! Nobody should have to participate in capitalism in order to get an education. Knowledge should be free and freely accessible."

"Which is just going to devalue the work of the people who construct and disseminate that knowledge," Thomas says impatiently.

"I'm not saying don't' pay the researchers and the teachers and you know it," Alex snaps. Burr and Angelica exchange glances. John goes to get his pizza because he does not actually feel like being the case study for Alex Vs. Thomas Vs. Education reform.

*

Eliza and John spend the first weekend of April in the wide expanse of staked-off yard behind the house that will supposedly become the garden. The seed packets are all neatly labelled in an unfamiliar hand.

"George," Eliza says, when he asks who the unknown penmen was. "He moved out last summer. He was in charge, back before Alex and Aaron decided the power structure wasn't horizontal enough."

At first they talk mostly about Alex, sharing stories and filling in the gaps of their knowledge with the minutiae of day-to-day observation. It's good, hearing how Alex has settled in, has relentlessly pushed himself further and higher with each passing day. Good, yes, but John relates teenaged adventures and grade school memories and with each one he feels as if he is still that kid, frantically holding up amateur scribbles in a bid not to be deemed irrelevant. He knows Alex has changed, has grown into the sort of person he wanted to become, and yet the nostalgia for their younger days bleeds closer to bitter and longing over his words. Eliza is kind enough never to call him out on it.

After the first day they start sharing stories from their work, his volunteering at a youth shelter and hers as a social worker. There turns out to be a lot to talk about, and he finds it easy to talk to someone with lived experience instead of the textbook theoretical soap boxing of the rest of the house.

"It's hard, sometimes," she says. "I grew up with more money than we knew what to do with, and then I work with these kids every day who literally don't know where their next meal is coming from."

John kind of wants to make a dry remark about just how hard that must be, but he's uncomfortably aware of his own middle-class upbringing and isn't sure if he'd come out looking or feeling any better than her. Instead he asks, "Your father owns this house, doesn't he?"

"He does, yes. Though there's been discussions lately around changing that."

"Isn't it kind of a conflict of interest, you and Angelica living here?"

She crouches down to pat dirt gently over the seeds she's just sprinkled. "It does create some problematic power imbalances, yes. But there's an agreement that we signed when we moved in. Aaron wrote it up." She pauses, chuckles under her breath. "There's also the agreement that Alex wrote up as soon as he found out that our father owned the place. He stayed up two nights in a row making sure it was perfect, and he not once stopped to think that someone had already thought of that and taken care of it."

"I bet Burr had a field day with that."

"No. Not at that point. I think he thought it was cute, actually. Incredibly driven and intelligent eager puppy Alex Hamilton."

"Some things never change."

They're quiet for a while before Eliza sets down her spade and looks over at him. "He was in love with you," she says. "For years."

John doesn't have to ask who she means, but he does anyway. "Alex?" At her nod he bows his head. "I know. I... Knew, at the time."

She clasps her hands together, flicks dirt from under her thumbnail. "I think it was good for him to move away. His entire childhood had been losing things, people, no matter how hard he worked to keep them. He'd learned that lesson already. He needed to start seeing the ways his work could pay off."

John quashes his instinctive reaction, shoves the spade hard into the dirt. "He wasn't losing me," he says. "He w-- is my best friend. He's like family, and if he wants to say that's got less value than sex and a wedding ring then that's his fucking baggage to deal with."

"Not every relationship has to be romantic. Or sexual, for that matter."

John shrugs. "For him it does."

Eliza picks up her spade. "Maybe. But five years is a long time. You've both changed."

"I wouldn't have wanted him like that even if I was out in high school," John says, frustrated. "I just want my best friend, but it seems like he's not interested."

Eliza blows out an irritated breath. "He doesn't want to scare you off. I think he's been in love with you so long that it's become just another part of his personality, like hating the snow or always stopping to pet dogs. He could hide it when you weren't seeing each other every day, but now that you're here he doesn't know how to handle it."

"Did he tell you this?"

"Yes, actually. That's one of the first things we agreed on in our relationship. Honesty. Openness."

John carefully unfolds the next seed packet. "I don't know what I'm supposed to do with that," he says quietly. Eliza doesn't reply.

*

His acceptance letter to med school comes in the middle of May. Lafayette takes him out for beers to celebrate. Angelica and Eliza are already at the bar when they get there, and John's more than happy to let them put his drinks on their familial-revenge-spending credit card.

"We're hiding from Aaron," Eliza explains very seriously. There's a bright yellow paper umbrella tucked behind her ear. John's pretty sure the shabby old bar does not provide tiny paper umbrellas.

"Do I want to know why?"

Angelica slams her glass down on the table. "I may have semi-publicly implicated him in the environmental justice poster campaign that started yesterday, and now he's worried it's going to effect his chances of getting the internship he applied for."

"You made a blog post with the words 'posters designed by law student Aaron Burr'," Eliza points out.

Angelica waves a hand airily. "Details aren't important."

Lafayette frowns. "But he did design the posters."

"Yes," Angelica says. "But nobody's supposed to know that."

Lafayette scoffs disdainfully. "Of course not."

"I got into med school, incidentally," John says.

"Oh good," angelica says absently, staring down at her phone.

Eliza pats his shoulder. "That's fabulous, John. You'll have to excuse my sister. She forgets that your name doesn't start with A and thus you remain a common human being who actually sees failure as a possible option."

"One day she'll fail at something, Lafayette says reassuringly. "It could happen."

Angelica smiles sweetly. "You should be glad I never fail. Remember Austria?"

Lafayette winces. "You can't hold that over me for the rest of my life."

"I don't see what's stopping me."

"Common decency and kindness-- oh wait."

Angelica doesn't respond, staring at something over his shoulder with a vaguely horrified expression.

"Oh look guys," she says loudly. "Aaron found us! and he brought his puppy with him."

She's been waiting actual months to say that," Eliza confides to the table. John twists around in his chair. Burr and Alex are striding across the bar. They're wearing matching tweed jackets, and Alex has a smudge of ink across the bridge of his nose. John has never been happier he dropped out of law school.

"Look!" says Alex as they get close to the table. "It's my four favourite people!"

"We're his favourites," Angelica says flatly. "You can tell because he actually stops paying attention to Aaron when we're in the room."

"I feel so honoured right now," Lafayette says. He bumps his shoulder against John's. "Don't you feel honoured?"

Alex stops right behind John's chair and leans against it, hands coming to rest lightly on John's shoulders. "So honoured," John says, flatly.

"It's very exclusive," Eliza says, and when he looks over at her he expects her to be looking at Alex but instead she meets his gaze with a little smirk, like they're sharing a private joke. He feels his own mouth curve upward in reaction.

"We should start a support group," Angelica says. "People Alexander Hamilton really likes."

"You aren't invited, Burr," Lafayette says, even as Hamilton sways backward and half falls against Burr's chest. Burr stares down like he's not entirely sure where this mess of dorky human suddenly invading his personal space could possibly have come from.

John rests his chin on the back of his chair, turned awkwardly to watch them. "When was the last time either of you slept?"

"I--" Alex makes a half-hearted effort to straighten up then gives up. "Is it Tuesday?"

John frowns. "It's Thursday."

"Oh," says Alex. And then, "Oh. Holy shit. Aaron Burr, it's Thursday!"

Burr frowns. "I don't think that's physically possible. Time doesn't... work. Like that."

"Jesus Christ," says John. "Please go get some sleep. both of you."

"You should listen to him," Eliza says. "He's a doctor."

Burr's frown gets even deeper. "Ok, I definitely know time doesn't work like that."

Alex perks up. "You got accepted?!"

John nods. "Got the letter today."

Alex's smile is the brightest thing in the room. "so you'll be sticking around? You got accepted here, right?"

John feels something quiet and affectionate rise in his chest. "Yeah, in the city. I'll be sticking around, if you'll have me."

Alex meets his eyes directly, and he seems suddenly far more cognisant. "Always, John. John glances away, afraid of what his expression is saying. Eliza's smiling at him across the table. Lafayette puts a hand on his shoulder and squeezes.

"Ok," John says. "I guess I'm staying."


End file.
